Mershell Cunningham Graham Jr was born at 7:45 pm on June 10 in 1921, a Friday, He was the first son and second child of Mershell and Fannie (Turner) Graham. He was delivered at Dunbar Hospital by Dr. Turner. Mershell was a big baby, weighing 8 1/2 pounds. He joined older sister, 14 month old Mary Virginia. Twenty months later his younger sister, my mother Doris, joined them.
Mershell was an active boy, falling down the clothes chute and breaking a window during a game of “who can hit their head against the window the hardest” with his younger sister, Doris. In family photographs, he shows no fear of the ferocious puppy or the family chickens.
On November 1, 1927, he was hit by a truck on his way back to school after lunch. He died just after midnight on November 2. My sister, cousins and I grew up with warnings to be careful crossing the street and to remember what happened to Mershell.
Mershell and Toodles – 1923
Mary Virginia, Mershell, Doris, Fannie, some chickens.
At Belle Isle outside of the Flower House with father and sister – 1925.
Doris, Mary Virginia, Mershell and Toodles
My mother wrote on the page of practice writing above “Mother teaching him to write his name.”
In the 1940 Census, the Frank and Mary Elkins family was living at 3045 Anderdon Street in Detroit, Michigan. The rent was $30 a week and they had lived in the same house in 1935. Everybody in the household had been identified as “W(hite)”, that was crossed out and “Neg(ro)” was written over it. Unfortunately, no household on this page has the person who provided the information to the enumerator identified.
Frank Elkins at work.
The father of the family, Frank Elkins, was 57 years old and had completed 4 years of high school. He worked at an auto plant as a courtesy driver. One of his granddaughters has informed me that he worked as a driver for Graham Paige Motors.
Three Marys - daughter Mary, mother Mary and my Aunt Mary V. Graham.
His wife, Mary, was 47 and not employed outside the home. She had completed 2 years of High school. She had made $50 in the last year outside of wages or salary. Daughter Mary was 21 and single. She had completed 4 years of high school and was not enrolled in school. She was not employed outside of the home.
Mother Mary Elkins and son Frank “Bud” Elkins
Young Frank was 19, single and had completed 1 year of college. He had attended school sometime since March 1, 1940. He was not employed. His daughter, Dee Dee, remembers that Frank graduated with honors from Cass Technical High School and went right to work, starting Elkin’s Electric Company. He tried to join the Electricians Union, but they barred Black folks from joining. In 1941 Frank and my aunt Mary V. Graham were married at Plymouth Congregational Church.
You can see an image of the original census sheet here Elkins 1940 Census.
To see where my Detroit relatives lived in 1940, click Where we lived.
From top left – my mother Doris Graham; from 1940 Wayne Bulletin; Old Main at Wayne; my mother’s transcript.
In February, 1940 my mother entered Wayne University. She received a full scholarship from the Detroit Board of education and a scholarship from the Delta Sorority for an an additional $100.
How much did it cost to attend Wayne in 1940? For residents of Wayne County, which my mother was, tuition for a full time student was $50. There was a $10 fee for entering freshmen. Textbooks would have been $5 or under.
When I went to Wayne from 1964 to 1968, tuition came to about $300 a year. Text books were still about $10. By the time my daughter attended during the 1998 – 1999 school year, tuition and fees were $3,708 a year. She says one book could cost $50. All of us lived at home and commuted, so had no housing costs.
My granddaughter Sydney, who is a freshman at Georgia State University and lives on campus. She could hardly believe these numbers. I just looked and tuition and housing this year, is over $20,000.
I published a longer post that included this information (without the actual pages) along with entries from my grandmother’s other journals in 2010. I am only including information from 1940 this time.
Feb. 5, 1940 Dear God and Little Book: the mail has just brought us the long looked for letter from Wayne University and the Board of Education that Doris has received the yearly scholarship to Wayne… I shed tears of joy… for more reasons than one or even two and the main reason is she deserves it for being such a sweet little “trick”…even if we do say so ourselves.
February 12 – Doris’s birthday – 17 today. We had a nice dinner, cake, ice cream and gifts for her from all.
March 12, my birthday, among all a purchase certificate from JL Hudson’s from our daughters and dad
April 3 – Mary Virginia is 20 today. We had nice dinner cake and ice cream and gifts from us all – also Aunt Daisy never forgets with money. Dad celebrates Christmas day.
June 7, 1940 Doris received $100 scholarship from the Deltas today… Isn’t that grand! It served 2 years.
June 10 — Mary Virginia has just gotten (through Jim and May) a good job at the County Bldg — God is so good to us. and today our Mershell Jr would have been 19 if he had lived – but we still say – God knows best.
Several days ago Cassmob’s of Family history across the seas blog had an interactive map of places she’s been writing about in Papua, New Guinea. I immediately went to Google Maps to figure out how to do it myself. Below is a map of places my family lived during the 1940 Census in Detroit. If you click on the blue markers it will tell you who lived there and how they are related to my grandparents.
Detroit is divided by Woodward Avenue into Westside and Eastside. My Cleages are all clustered close on the Westside, which is also where I grew up. The Grahams are more spread out on the Eastside. Plymouth had a vibrant youth group program in the 1930 and that is where my parents met. The old Plymouth Congregational Church was urban renewed in the late 1970s and moved location but in 1940 it was located at Garfield and Beaubien, right in the middle of what is now the Detroit Medical Center.
There is a way to insert pop up photographs too which I am going to figure out next.
I don’t know who the young woman on the left is, next is my mother, Doris Graham, my uncle Hugh Cleage and my aunt Mary V. Graham. Taken in 1940 in Detroit, Michigan. Photographer not known.
After I finished writing about my Grahams in the 1940 Census yesterday, I looked at some maps of the enumeration district. Here are some photographs I put together from Google maps showing what the area looks like now and what streets were included in their enumeration district. My cousin Barbara and I visited the area in 2004 and it looked just like this.
The Enumeration District is outlined in red. My grandparents house is the “A”. The yellow line traces the route to the elementary school.
An ariel view from google of my grandparents block. Their house was located where the “A” is. There used to be an alley but it is now overgrown as they don’t maintain alleys in Detroit any more. The Jordan house and the Graham house shared the enclosed space. There was another alley next to the Jordan house which is included inside the fence.
The site of my grandparents house. Now a storage area.
Unmaintained side alley next to the house site.
The factory across the street from my grandparents house.
Thomas Elementary school. The school my mother and her siblings attended. Now deserted and burned.
Looking down the street from elementary school toward the ruined Packard plant. My Uncle Mershell was hit and killed by a truck on the way back to school with his older sister, Mary Vee after lunch. I think she always felt she was somehow responsible.
The 1940 census was released yesterday. Today I was able to find both sets of grandparents, with my parents still living at home, the only great grandparent still alive, three families of cousins and my in-laws who were married and living in their own home with the first of their twelve children, baby Maxine. Today I am going to write about my mother’s family, the Grahams.
The Grahams – Fannie and Mershell 1939
My grandparents were enumerated on April 12, 1940. They lived, as I expected, at 6638 Theodore Street in Detroit. The entire enumeration district was white with the exception of my grandparents and their next door neighbors, the Jordans. Just noticed my grandparents and family were enumerated as “white”. Among the adults over 40 was a mix of naturalized citizens from Italy, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, England, Germany and natural born citizens from the southern United states. There were a few people who had filed their first papers towards gaining citizenship and a few “aliens”. The younger adults and the children were almost all born in Michigan. The majority of people in the district had lived in the same place since 1935. Among the workers on my grandparents page were a janitor, two maids, a laborer at a spring factory, a bender at an auto plant, a checker at a dress shop, a grinder at an auto factory, a delivery man for a print shop, a stock clerk at an auto factory, a stenographer, a time keeper at a machine shop, a manager for a coal and ice concern and a salesman for a radio concern.
Their house
My grandmother, Fannie, was the informant for her family. She and Mershell were both 50. He had completed 8th grade. She and 20 year old daughter, Mary V., had completed 4 years of high school. My mother, Doris was 17 and had completed 4 years of high school and was attending college. Mershell had worked 52 weeks as a stock clerk at an auto factory and earned $1,720 during 1939. Mary V. was working as a stenographer at a newspaper office and had earned nothing in 1939. They owned their own home which was worth $3,500 and had lived in the same house in 1935.
Above Doris and Mary V. in front of Plymouth Congregational Church.
Did I learn anything new from this census? This was the first time I looked at the whole enumeration district which gave me more of an overview of the neighborhood. I did not know that my grandfather completed 8th grade. I always heard he taught himself to read because he never attended school. I wonder which is true, did he teach himself to read and my grandmother just said he completed 8th grade or did he go to school. No big surprises, mostly seeing in the record what I already knew.
Source 1940 U.S. Census. State: Michigan. County: Wayne. City: Detroit. Ward:15. Enumeration District: 84-862. Household: 331. Sheet Number: 16-A. Date: April 12, 1940. Head of Household: Mershell Graham. Informant: wife, Fannie Graham. To see the census sheet for the Graham Family – click.
What education did your mother receive? Your grandmothers? Great-grandmothers? Note any advanced degrees or special achievements.
On My Maternal Side
My 3X great grandmother, Annie Williams, was born about 1820 in Virginia into slavery. According to the 1880 Census, when she was about 60, she spoke English and could not read or write.
Eliza - my 2x great grandmother
Her daughter, my 2X great grandmother, Eliza Williams Allen, was born in Alabama about 1839 into slavery. She was freed by 1860. According to the 1910 census, she was about 67, spoke English and could not read or write
Jennie - my greatgrandmother
Her daughter, my great grandmother, Jennie Allen Turner was born free in Montgomery, Alabama in 1866. According to the 1880 Census, she was 13 years old, had attended school in the past year, spoke English and was literate. I found one of my favorite books at her house “Lydia of the Pines.”
Fannie - my maternal grandmother
Her daughter, my Grandmother Fannie Mae Turner Graham, was born in 1888 in Lowndes County, Alabama. She grew up in Montgomery. According to the 1900 census, she was 11 years old, at school, spoke English and was literate. My mother told me that when Fannie graduated from high school – State Normal, was offered a scholarship to Fisk but refused it and took a job in her uncles store, which she managed until she married in 1918. Also according to my mother, Fannie could quickly add long columns of numbers in her head.
Doris - my mother
My mother , Doris Graham Cleage, was born in Detroit in 1923. She graduated from Eastern High School in Detroit and received a full scholarship to Wayne State where she earned a BA with distinction as a Sociology major in June/1944. She returned to school in 1951 and earned teaching certification. In 1958 she became a masters candidate in education, completing her Master’s of Education Degree in the fall of 1958. She took postmasters classes in education during a sabbatical in 1963. She also took evening classes in 1968, when I was a senior at Wayne State.
My great grandmother, Emma Jones Turner (My grandmother Fannie’s paternal grandmother) was born about 1840 in South Carolina into slavery. According to the 1880, 1900 and 1910 census she spoke English and was literate. I wish I knew more about her. I never heard a story about her. After my grandmother’s father was killed when she was 4 years old, her mother broke all ties with her husband’s family.
On My Paternal Side
Celia - my great grandmother
My great grandmother Celia Rice Cleage Sherman was my grandfather’s mother. She was born about 1855 into slavery in Virginia and brought to Tennessee as a child. She was about 10 when freedom came. In the 1880 census she could neither read nor write. By the 1930 census she spoke English and could read but could not write. I wonder if my grandfather or his siblings taught her to read when they went to school.
My 2X great grandmother, Clara Green was born into slavery about 1829 in Kentucky. She was my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage’s grandmother. In the 1880 census she was listed as about 55, spoke English and could not read or write.
Her daughter, my great grandmother Anna Allen Reed was born about 1849 in Kentucky into slavery. According to the 1910 Census she spoke English but could not read or write. Anna’s four older children were illiterate while the four youngest were literate.
Pearl - my paternal grandmother
Her youngest daughter, my grandmother Pearl Reed Cleage was born in Lebanon, Kentucky in 1886. In the 1900 census she was 16 and where it says if you were or were not in school it says “Book 1” I don’t know what that means. At any rate she was literate and spoke English. My Aunt Barbara told me she finished high school. I remember my grandparent’s house being full of books.
